Congressional partisanship is increasingly dividing lawmakers, policy debate is split along party lines, and the dissenting voice is diminishing in American politics.

The cause? The increasing tendency of lawmakers to vote along party lines, making the debate over issues one-dimensional. The moderate voice in Congress has all but disappeared, and between the years 1965-2004, the dissenting voice has been muted.

At a little past 10:30pm Pacific time on Sunday, the Mars rover Curiosity successfully navigated "seven minutes of terror" to land on the Martian planet. Livestream of the JPL control room showed NASA scientists cheering, even crying, in delight.

Libertarian Party presidential candidate Gary Johnson received 19% support in poll published late last week. The survey, commissioned by the Libertarian Action Super PAC, was geared specifically to confront the candidate selection criteria of the Commission on Presidential Debates, which are rigged to favor of the candidates put forward by the Republican and Democratic parties.

A new survey released by Slate shows that when it comes to personality, presidential candidate Barack Obama still has the edge over Republican contender Mitt Romney.

It’s likely to come as a surprise to many small government advocates that today the US government (local, state, and fed) is the smallest it has been in 45 years.

The Hamilton Project recently released the graph below that shows the ratio of government employees versus population.

The Hamilton Project is an economic policy initiative of the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank.

Pew released the results of a survey on the Presidential race showing President Obama having a 10% lead on his challenger Mitt Romney. Many bloggers pointed to the "inaccuracy" of the poll because more Democrats were questioned than Republicans.

Shortly after noon on Thursday, August 2, Vermont farmer Roger Pion, 34, rode his parents’ 20,000 pound tractor into Newport, Vermont, on his way to the Orleans County Sheriff’s Department’s new building, where he rolled back and forth over seven of the sheriff department’s cruisers (two unmarked) and a van, before moseying on down the road with no one in pursuit.

Green Party Candidate Jill Stein went orange last week, after being arrested in Philadelphia. The presidential candidate and her running mate Cheri Honkala joined in on a citizen organized, sit in protest of Fannie Mae, the mortgage giant tied to the housing bubble and subprime mortgages.